Dispelling nutrition myths, ranting, and occasionally, raving

Tag Archives: sugar

A school in Ottawa decided to no-longer offer chocolate milk to students as part of their milk program. This, I should add, was based on a vote taken at a parent council meeting. Predictably, a bunch of parents, students, and assorted individuals from all over the province are outraged at this infringement on their freedom. This despite the fact that chocolate milk has not been banned from the school, the school is simply no-longer selling it to the kids.

I’m listening to the radio call-in program about this outrage and quite frankly I feel like throwing up my hands, saying eat and drink what ever you damn want, and going off to farm alpacas or something similar that will simultaneously allow me to forsake my current profession and keep contact with human beings at a bare minimum. I mean honestly, what is wrong with people. It is that vital that your child have chocolate milk at school once a week that you’re launching a protest over the removal of chocolate milk from the school milk program but you can’t be assed to pick up a carton of chocolate milk at the store to send to school in your child’s lunch? Do you not normally buy groceries? How do you feed your child outside of school if it’s too much of an ordeal to dump a cup of chocolate milk in a container and pop it in your kid’s lunch box? Lest you think I’m exaggerating, just listen to the first guest on the show. This is literally her argument. If you want your child to have chocolate milk so badly, give it to them yourself. You can let your kid guzzle chocolate milk at home until the cows come home.

Then, there are people arguing that kids should get chocolate milk as part of the school milk program because this may be the only little bit of nutrition they get. That may well be true (and this is incredibly sad) but may I be so bold as to point out that white milk is still available through the program? As my friend Yoni has often argued, suggesting that children be given chocolate milk for the nutrition in milk is like arguing that they be given apple pie for the nutrition in fruit.

I think that many of the people arguing for keeping chocolate milk on-offer in schools have fallen for the marketing hype and genuinely think that chocolate milk is a “health” food. There was one dad who called in and said that his kids drink chocolate milk every day and nothing else sweet, except juice. But he was all for pop being banned in schools because kids get too much sugar. Well, one cup of orange juice has 22 grams of sugar, the same amount of pop has 26 grams, and chocolate milk has 24 grams. That’s not a huge difference. If sugar is your concern, then chocolate milk and pop are on par with each other.

Removing chocolate milk from a school milk program is not denying parents the right to give their children chocolate milk. It’s removing one source in a landscape that is saturated in chocolate milk, pop, juice, sports drinks, and energy drinks. Should any and all foods be available for purchase in schools? Schools do not have an obligation to act as grocery stores. They do not have to sell any and all products that a child might desire. Making white milk the only option (for sale) in schools helps to make the healthy choice the default for students.

There is no good reason for schools to be offering children chocolate milk as part of their milk programs. I applaud this school for taking the initiative to remove the option of chocolate milk from their program. Schools should be places where children learn and that includes learning healthy behaviours, including making healthy food choices. Schools should not be profiting from selling children foods that should not be a regular part of their diets. It’s disgraceful that some parents think that daily delivery of chocolate milk is a greater priority than the actual health and well-being of their children. So much so that they are willing to publicly fight against a decision that was made with the children’s best interest at heart. If they have this much time and passion about school nutrition maybe they can take some of that energy and put it into fighting for a national school lunch program. You know, something that would actually benefit children. Sorry if I sound a little harsh but it frustrates me to no-end that people are so self-centred that they are unwilling to put the well-being of children, both their own, and others ahead of their own uninformed opinions. Cry me a freaking river (of chocolate milk).

I wanted to write a little about Clif Bars because I think there’s a lot of confusion about them. Before I start though, I should get this out of the way, this is not a sponsored post. I have no affiliation with Clif Bar whatsoever. Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to it.

For those who don’t know what Clif Bars are, I’ve linked to their website above. Basically, they are energy dense snack bars designed to fuel athletes before, and depending on the activity and the athlete, during exercise. If you go to their website the first thing you see are a collection of images of people engaged in physical activity from climbing to cycling. Much of their energy density comes from sugar. One bar contains 20+ grams of sugar (that’s about 5 teaspoons) and about 250 calories. This nutritional composition is often a good thing for athletes who are looking for easy to digest snacks that will quickly provide them with fuel. However, for non-athletes, or people who are not looking for a calorically-dense snack, possibly not the best choice.

The reason why I wanted to write about this today is because I think most people who are consuming Clif Bars as a snack are not aware that they’re intended for active people and are operation under the false impression that they’re a “health food”. Anybody else watch the new version of Queer Eye? It was great and I totally want to be the first woman on the show (hook me up!) but I digress. There was an episode in which the man they were making over was talking about how he tries to eat healthy, and then listed off fruit and Clif Bars, as examples of the healthy foods he consumes regularly. And I thought to myself how misguided this belief is that Clif Bars are a “healthy” snack for the average Joe who has a relatively sedentary job. He’s just getting a whole lot of sugar with a few vitamins and minerals thrown in. For comparison’s sake, a Mars bar contains 260 calories and 30 grams of sugar, a Snickers bar has 250 calories and 27 grams of sugar, an Oh Henry! bar has 260 calories and 26 grams of sugar. All quite similar to a Clif bar.

Despite the fact that Clif Bars are clearly intended for athletes and active individuals, I doubt that many people purchasing them are visiting their website and are likely unaware of this intended consumer. They’re sold in grocery stores with all the other snack bars, sometimes at the cash, and sometimes in free-standing displays. Aside from the picture of the man climbing the mountain on the front, there is little reason to believe that they’re not intended for the average individual.

Just for fun, I did a twitter poll to see what people thought (pictured above). Of course, my tweeps are an above average bunch and the results likely reflect that. I got a few comments from people that “it depends”, “with a caveat”, and that the question was a false dichotomy.

Now that I’ve totally ruined Clif Bars for you, I will mention that they have newer products that are actually pretty decent snacks. I always have a stash of snacks in my desk at work and one of my favourites to have on-hand is the nut butter-filled energy bar which has considerably less sugar than the original energy bar, (although the same number of calories – I should add that while I do have a predominantly sedentary job, I also run every day and regularly engage in other physical activity) only about two teaspoons. My favourite is the peanut butter flavour (yum!). Even newer on the market is the whey protein bar which has only about one teaspoon of sugar, 14 grams of protein, and 260 calories (these are good when I have a long day and a long run, otherwise they’re a little higher in calories than I’d normally want in a snack).

I should also mention that ideally a healthy snack contains two food groups, preferably with one of those being vegetables and fruit. Some examples: an apple and a handful of nuts, hummus and veggie sticks, a banana and peanut butter, bell pepper and cheese.

Long story short, are Clif Bars a “healthy” snack? Probably not for the average person but… if you’re an athlete or have a very active job and aren’t consuming many other sources of added sugar then maybe.

One thing that struck me right away was that this study was done with adults, no infants or toddlers, or children of any age were involved in the research. Adult participants were provided with puréed vegetables (broccoli, kale, and spinach) with varying concentrations of added sugar. They were asked to rate them on various attributes, and most importantly, they were asked to indicate whether or not they liked or disliked each sample. I was surprised that the conclusion would be drawn that adding sugar to green vegetables is a reasonable means to encourage infants to eat them (I’m saying infants because these were puréed veggies and as such are really only suitable for babies just starting to eat solid foods) based on ratings by adults. After all, adults have very different palates than infants and have very different relationships with food that have been shaped over decades. To me it seems inappropriate to conclude that because adults preferred sugar sweetened veggies that infants will as well. The authors themselves also state that, “It should be noted that infants and toddlers are also not merely small adults”. However, they also use the analogy of adults beginning coffee consumption with added sugar and gradually weaning off the sugar as justification for proposing adding sugar to vegetables when the World Health Organization, among many other bodies, is currently encouraging reduced consumption of added sugars.

The second thing I wondered about was precisely how much sugar was added to each serving of vegetables. The news article, and much of the journal article, references 1% and 2% concentrations but what did that translate to in teaspoons or grams? It sounds pretty innocuous, right? 1% or 2% is hardly anything. Well, in actuality the 1% was equivalent to the addition of 1/2 teaspoon per serving and the 2% was equivalent to 1 teaspoon per serving. Not an insignificant amount when you’re talking about toddlers who are generally only consuming a tablespoon or two of a food in a serving. Interestingly, the researchers asked parents how comfortable they would be offering their babies vegetables with added sugar in amounts of 8 calories, 16 calories, 1/2 teaspoon, or 1 teaspoon. The 8 calories = 1/2 teaspoon = 1% concentration. The 16 calories = 1 teaspoon = 2% concentration. Essentially asking: how can we frame this added sugar to make it more palatable to parents who are trying to feed their children healthy diets?

Despite the general conclusion that adding sugar to vegetables may encourage young children to eat them, even the ratings by adults were not overwhelmingly improved by the added sugar. For broccoli and kale purées both 1% and 2% sugar increased overall liking. For spinach the 2% sugar (but not the 1%) increased overall liking. For broccoli and spinach the sugar increased the ratings of liking from disliked to liked. However, for kale, even at the highest sugar level ratings never rose above the midpoint (i.e. neither like nor dislike). So, these adults did not like any of the green vegetables to begin with (at least not in puréed form) but after adding higher quantities of sugar they liked the spinach, and even with the smaller quantity of added sugar they liked the broccoli. But neither amount of sugar was enough to get them to like the kale. Would babies have different initial reactions to these vegetables? Would the addition of sugar cause them to change these reactions? I don’t know and I don’t think anyone can say based on the results of this study alone.

Just for fun, I took a look at the funding sources for the study after I finished reading it. Can you guess what one of the funding organizations was? If you guess the Sugar Association you’d be correct. I think this explains a lot because honestly I was a bit baffled as to why anyone would be looking into adding sugar to get babies to eat vegetables and why such tenuous conclusions would be drawn and publicized based on the actual findings. But who other than the Sugar Association would think that we need to encourage babies to eat more sugar?

I think a better analogy than the sugar sweetened coffee for this research would be the argument that chocolate milk is a good way to get kids to drink milk or that baking apples into a pie is a good way to encourage fruit consumption. In some ways it’s even worse because infants are at the mercy of their caregivers when it comes to what foods are offered to them and encouraging a preference for only sweet foods at such a young impressionable age could have long lasting implications for their food choices and health throughout their lives.

Like this:

It may be getting a little cool for cold brew (no, not beer, coffee brewed with cold water basically a sort of iced coffee) but we recently had a belated summer heatwave here and I thought I might switch-up my usual Starbucks latte order for an iced beverage. I thought I might get a cold brew. You know, nice and refreshing. I knew that I would have to look closely at the options to get something without added sugar because as I’ve ranted about before, sweetened is the ridiculous default option for iced coffee at Starbucks.

I love having the Starbucks app because I can order ahead, walk over from work, and have my drink ready to go. So as I head out from the office I start perusing the menu for a nice cold beverage option. I see “vanilla sweet cream cold brew” which sounds great but clocking in at 110 calories isn’t exactly what I’m looking for. There’s also “Narino 70 cold brew” which is really what I’m looking for at 3 calories, no added, sugar or cream. Just to keep my options open though (maybe I want a little something extra), I scroll down the menu and see “iced coffee” which sounds great. It’s “lightly sweetened” which sounds perfect. Just a touch of sweetness would be a nice treat.

How much sugar would you say “lightly sweetened” means? A teaspoon? Maaaybe two teaspoons? How about FIVE teaspoons??! That’s correct, a “lightly sweetened” iced coffee from Starbucks contains 5 freaking teaspoons of sugar. That’s one teaspoon less than the recommended maximum daily amount of added sugar for an adult woman so forget having any other treats. Just one so-called “lightly” sweetened iced coffee and put a fork in me because I’m done.

Anyway… I got so annoyed when I saw that, I ended up not ordering anything and just making a coffee (black, no sugar) when I got back to the office because if I’m going to have a treat I want it to be something better than a Starbucks coffee. And if you want your treat to be a Starbucks coffee, that’s cool too, but I just wanted to make sure you were aware that the “lightly” sweetened iced coffee is heavy on the misleading description and light on the accurate advertising.